jas lin: ♡ queerantine sanctuary ♡

Artist Portrait by Charles Han

♡ queerantine sanctuary ♡ is a virtual community for Pasadena and Altadena LGBTQIA+ high school students & friends hosted by Side Street Projects’ 2021 spring artist-in-residence jas lin (they/them).

Over the course of 6–7 online gatherings, a cohort of ~20 students collectively explored how to reclaim their bodies as technologies of freedom, while cultivating deeper relationships with one another through dialogue and art-making. jas sees the queer body (both individual and collective) as a dynamic place where we can re-learn our autonomy and re-member our possibility. This was a space for decompression, contemplation, and collaboration– a gentle invitation for students to feel at home in their bodies during quarantine, which became more powerful in the context of the intentional community that was formed. jas offered points of inspiration, journaling prompts, and embodiment practices for students to reflect, discuss, and create. This round of ♡ queerantine sanctuary ♡ culminated in a group zine for and by the students; showcasing the art they made during the course of their gatherings.

BIO

jas lin (they/them) is a performance artist, filmmaker, and movement facilitator committed to the life-long process of un-learning and un-teaching oppressive, Othering, and superficial ways of moving, being, sensing, and knowing. they stage exorcisms for purging choreographies of the learned body and shutting down the internal and external surveillance cameras that suggest there is a Proper way to move through the world. lin’s performances, workshops, and films have been shared in spaces around the world, including REDCAT Theater, NAVEL, Kassel Dokfest, and MoCA Shanghai. 

Follow jas lin on Instagram @allthatjasss

In 2021, jas lin participated in SSP's "re(VISION)s Residency Program". In re(VISION)S they were invited to "vision revolutionary and liberatory realities rooted in ancestral inheritances and re(VISION)ed technologies of freedom”.